Brain Integration Therapy

I'm so happy for Kiana's recent success with reading.  She went from being unable to remember what sound individual letters make (as recently as September) to reading six Bob books last month in order to earn her free personal pan Pizza Hut pizza through Book It. 

Despite her posed, frozen face, she was very excited and proud to get her own pizza.

As I shared earlier, we encountered some difficulties early in the school year and took a little journey of trial and error to educate mama on how to best help her.  I tend to be pretty relaxed with formal education in the early years so it might seem surprising that I was concerned about my barely-turned-six-year-old being unable to remember phonics sounds, but my gut just told me there was something different about the way her brain was working and I needed to figure out a way to help her so she would have success.

A friend of mine recommended Dianne Craft's materials and her book Brain Integration Therapy Manual.  We have implemented just a few of the techniques and I am now a believer!  In a nutshell, Craft explains that the left and right sides of the brain are separated by the Corpus Callosum which usually acts as a bridge to transfer information from the short term memory (left brain) to the long term memory (right), but sometimes this bridge instead acts as a wall.  When this happens, a child can only learn so much until her short term memory is filled up.  This is what happened with Kiana.  She learned a few sounds, but then seemed unable to remember anything else.  When I would show her a letter and tell her its sound, she would repeat it after me.  Then I would move on to review sounds she knew already, and when I came back to the "new" sound, she couldn't remember what it was.  She would tap her index finger against her temple, her face all scrunched up with effort, and say "I can't remember that one."

Craft describes four different learning gates that can be blocked when this happens.  Kiana's difficulty seems to be in auditory processing.  In addition to her struggles with phonics, she mispronounces many words (such as "emeny" for enemy and "aminal" for animal), and doesn't follow verbal instruction well.  I had thought she just wasn't paying attention, but it makes more sense now.  She is also amazing at playing Memory--which of course uses the right brain (pictures and colors) rather than the left brain (language)--she beats me every time and it's not because I'm letting her!

We have been spending about 5-10 minutes each day doing exercises to help cross that midline in her brain.  We are also using Craft's phonics flashcards which incorporate color, pictures, and humor with the phonics sounds superimposed on top of the picture because the right side of the brain stores color, pictures, and humor while the left side of the brain is the language base.  When combining all these elements into one unit, the entire brain is working together to store the information.  We have also implemented Craft's advice to hold the card up so that her eyes have to look up and to the left to "take a picture" and store the information in her right brain which she can then recall later.

As I texted to the friend who loaned me her manual, "I would never believe the change if I wasn't seeing it myself!"  This little lady is simply zooming along with reading now, full of grins and confidence.  I am so grateful we learned about Dianne Craft's work early so we won't have years of struggling before figuring out how she learns best.